New Congress May Not Scrap Nuclear Pact

December 13, 1994|The New York Times

SEOUL, South Korea - — A leading Senate critic of the nuclear agreement between the United States and North Korea softened his tone on Monday and predicted that the new Republican-controlled Congress would not follow through on recent threats to overturn the accord.

"As far as any efforts to scuttle that agreement, I don't anticipate any," Sen. Frank Murkowski said after he and Sen. Paul Simon made a rare visit by high-level U.S. officials to North Korea.

The comments by Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, seem to remove one of the first challenges to his foreign policy that President Clinton was expected to face next year from the Republicans who swept control of both houses of Congress in last month's elections. Murkowski is in line to become chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on East Asia in the new Congress, so his opinion on the nuclear accord will carry great weight.

The Republican legislator said he was still critical of the Geneva accord and expected it to be examined thoroughly but not scrapped by the new Congress. He said his criticism was directed at a clause that allows North Korea to put off inspections of two suspected nuclear waste sites until construction of modern nuclear reactors is well under way. That will be years from now and after the expenditure of about $2 billion, he said.

Murkowski said last month that he would block the United States from buying the oil it is committed to supplying to North Korea under the pact. A few days laterMurkowski pulled back from that threat.

The agreement, signed in October, requires North Korea to give up activities that are suspected of being aimed at weapon development. In exchange, it will receive two modern light-water nuclear reactors, at an estimated cost of $4 billion that will be borne mainly by South Korea and Japan. The United States will provide North Korea with fuel oil until the new nuclear plants are ready and will relax its restrictions on economic and diplomatic relations with the communist nation.